Family is the basic unit of society. But what happens when a promised "safe and effective" medical procedure acts like a hardrive wipe of all experiences? Relationships rooted in shared experiences are destroyed. 275 family members shared their experiences with #ECT and how it impacted their loved ones. This peer-reviewed article (published today) in Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. My dad, a gentle, soft-spoken, hero-of-a-man, had never previously been candid with me about his thoughts witnessing my ECT experience. When I asked him if he'd be willing to share a statement for the media about the article giving family members a voice, he sent me the following: “The immediate effects of my daughter’s ECT were startling: memory loss. We are, after all, the sum of our memories. She knew I was her father, but she did not remember anything about our relationship. I was told this would be short-term. They lied. Even worse was the long-term effect on her physical health. It was a prescribed massive electrical injury, again, and again, and again. Typical long-term results of multiple electrical injuries include neurological damage, depression, anxiety, PTSD, migraines, hearing loss, reduced cognitive abilities, and/or attention difficulties, along with chronic pain. She got most of those, plus some extra.” I wish our ECT experience was an anomaly. I wish that raw pain had been isolated to a single family to protect the others. Sadly, these survey results indicate more families were harmed in ways far worse than I was. This is why the @FDA must enforce their 2018 ruling adulterating ECT devices and @CMSGov must cut off funding until doctors have training in how to chose an electrical dose that can reliably replicate research findings on their individual patient with a unique head size and shape. The last survey response highlighted in the article is a devastating example of what can happen when a doctor isn't trained in how to choose a correct dose, the clinic isn't prepared for manufacturer identified treatment consequences, and the hospital's lawyers bury it. My dad's heartbreaking explanation of his witnessing my ECT experience could have been so much worse in this medically sanctioned Russian Roulette. #AuditECT @Chris_E_Harrop @LisaTMSA @ReadReadj @BasedMikeLee @MakeAmericaHA bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wil…

You know what's weird? Muscle atrophy! How does the body determine where to hold on for dear life and where to just let go? @MGHNeurology @PaganoniMDPhD #MND

One thing I’ve learned from sitting inside FDA advisory meetings is how much history gets forgotten. Many people assume the safety debates around antidepressants are new. They’re not. Back in the early 2000s, major questions were being raised about both the safety and effectiveness of some of these medications. Internal documents, congressional investigations, and FDA hearings were all part of the conversation. During those hearings, FDA scientists identified a higher suicide risk in people taking these drugs, yet some of that data struggled to reach the public discussion. The internal FDA and Pfizer documents showed that other countries had issues with Zoloft efficacy data. Somehow it went on to become the #1 prescribed antidepressant. It ultimately took congressional pressure and years of advocacy before the black box suicide warning was added. This history matters. Because when we forget what has already been uncovered, we lose important context for the conversations happening today. This is from my conversation on the Rise to More podcast, where we talk about the history behind these FDA hearings and why it still matters today. Understanding the past isn’t about fear. It’s about making sure patients and families have the full picture. linkedin.com/posts/kimwitcza…

Percentage of the public who rank the honesty/ ethics of pharmacists as “high/ very high.” As with hospitals and physicians, the reputations of pharmacists continue to erode. The public is fed up with the healthcare system.

Living with progressive respiratory dysfunction and a desire to do so much more that my present capacity allows, left me feeling rather broken this weekend. Last night I hashed out my concerns with my dad and brother, and then fell asleep in tearful prayer. This morning, I awoke to find my my cousin sent me this quote from a past mentor: "He's not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save us in our imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He's not embarrassed by us, angry by us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief." -Chieko N. Okazaki My heart and mind shift to the Celestial thoughts of the Apostle Paul to the Philippians 4:11,13 11 Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. 12 I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. 13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. I choose to press forward with steadfast faith in Christ. #Christianity #LDS

Every time I hear an Electroconvulsive Therapy provider defend it's practice as "settled science" Pointing to its having been used for nearly a century, I think of the historic use of mercury salts and the realities I face living in a body with electrical injury's broken sodium-potassium-ATP pump. doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.1582… @ReadReadj @marcjeschke @Ionic_Injury

Having been stuck in the psychiatric system while struggling through undiagnosed, untreated encephalopathy, I was stripped of scriptures by doctor's orders. At a different institution they attempted to diagnose me with OCD after documenting I prayed when I awoke, before meals, and before I went to bed, no different than many participating members of diverse faiths. Stripping me of religious texts during institutionalization and essentially ordering me not to pray under threat of additional involuntary medication was my modern foray into Mosiah 24 and 2 Nephi 32:8. Akin to prescribing an order which cuts a child off from loving parents. But they couldn't stop me from praying in my heart. @danielmingram #SaintsonX

I am still trapped on the same SSRI I was prescribed at 7 years old because every attempt to come off has resulted in severe, debilitating withdrawal.... At 23 years old, I decided I wanted to come off antidepressants. Despite having been on them virtually my entire life — throughout my childhood and brain development — my doctor tapered me off in just 6 weeks, following the same outdated and dangerous guidance many doctors still use today. What followed was a severe full-body neurological crisis: nonstop physical, cognitive and psychological suffering unlike anything I knew a human being could endure. When I went back to my doctor and told him I was in withdrawal, I was told antidepressant withdrawal “doesn’t exist,” that symptoms of “discontinuation syndrome” are “mild and only last two weeks,” and that what I was experiencing was proof I needed the drugs After months of torturous suffering and countless emergency room visits, I had no choice but to reinstate the antidepressant. But even after reinstating, the neurological damage from the rapid, doctor-directed taper did not go away. That is why the term “withdrawal” is often deeply misleading. For many people, coming off antidepressants can trigger a devastating neurological injury that persists for years. I still do not feel normal. I am intermittently bedridden, and even as I type this, my brain feels like it is on fire. I genuinely do not remember what happiness, love, or emotional connection are supposed to feel like anymore. So much of my cognition, personality, creativity, and ability to access my mind the way I once could feels altered or gone. Some days the suffering becomes so overwhelming that I genuinely do not know how much longer I can continue living in this condition. Today, at 30 years old, I am still on the same medication I was prescribed as a child. I desperately want to come off, but every attempt has caused severe, debilitating withdrawal that has made it physically impossible. #MentalHealthMonth #NobodyToldMe #medicationinjury #HHS #HealingJourney #overmedicalization #SSRI

Elder Gong COOKED with this one.

As a child, I was publicly celebrated for being diagnosed with ADHD. Sharing my diagnosis proudly in the newspaper. Ironically 22 years later I found myself in another newspaper. This time about the devastating harm and that followed from entering the psychiatric system in the first place. The Article Reveals The Contradiction: I was labeled with an “attention disorder,” yet I become intensely focused when engaged in something meaningful to me. I did not lack the capacity for attention. My attention was context-dependent: I don’t see a “disordered” child. I see a child whose mind and behavior did not conform to narrow institutional and societal expectations of how children are expected to think, learn, behave, and focus within the conventional school system: • Sitting still for hours at a time with sustained attention
• One-size-fits-all learning styles
• Memorization and regurgitation of information. I struggled within systems that treated one narrow model as the standard for intelligence and success. I never fit neatly within that mold. My differences were interpreted through subjective diagnostic frameworks built around symptom checklists and socially constructed ideas of what constitutes “normal” behavior. The standards used to define “success,” “intelligence,” and “normal” behavior are not objective laws of nature, but human-made subjective social constructs. Children who deviate from that framework often become pathologized.
My behavior that deviated from institutional expectations was seen as evidence of a brain pathology requiring pharmaceutical correction. One childhood diagnosis spiraled into a cascade of psychiatric drugs I never truly needed. And In trying to chemically “fix” what was never defective in me to begin with, the system ultimately created profound dysfunction and neurological harm. To this day, I am still fighting to get my brain, health, and life back after the devastating harm psychiatric drugs caused. Are we truly diagnosing “disorder” or are we enforcing conformity? Difference is not disorder. #adhd

This is a common refrain from prescribers - because they have been taught withdrawal is 'mild and brief' which is re-iterated by academics deliberately focusing on unrepresentative samples - so naturally this sort of misdiagnosis will happen and be experienced as gaslighting from patients.

Psychiatrists are doing far more damage with their pompous attitude than they imagine. Every patient whose lived experience is dismissed walks away trusting the profession less and less. That distrust compounds. It’s going to take far longer to undo what has been done than anyone in the field conceives.

Colombia just held their election. They require voter ID and use paper ballots. They hand-count the votes of each station one by one. No machines or mail-in ballots due to security concerns. ~24 million votes. It was all done in a couple hours.

When a medical doctor suddenly drives his family off a cliff during a "Depressive episode" and his wife says it's completely uncharacteristic of him, it's crucial to re-evaluate the case looking at his treatment plan, knowing SSRIs and other antidepressants can trigger #akathesia and homicidal ideation. Thank heavens he was driving a @Tesla. It saved he and his family from the 300 foot drop. abc7news.com/post/devils-sli… @MISSDFoundation @LauraDelano @SecKennedy

Statistics are irrelevant to the individual. “It’s very rare” means absolutely nothing to me if I or someone I love has been debilitated by a medical intervention. A 1 in 100 event is 100 percent of your life when you are the one living it. And “rare” only holds if anyone bothered to count. For withdrawal, they never did. The number is a guess dressed up as data.

In 2013, I met one of the pioneering "detransitioners." He'd lived as a woman for a decade and was one of the first who'd had all the surgeries. He said that ultimately after he realized he was as uncomfortable in his body as a woman, and didn't like the way men sexualized women or how women were treated by some men either. He said the newness and novelty wore off and nightly, alone, he began to recognize he was just as uncomfortable living as a woman as living as a man, saying the real problem was hating self and no amount of hair, makeup, nice clothes, or fabulous shoes could change that--though a great increasing effort was made for 10 years. Gradually the choice was made to learn to accept the uniqueness of self and learn to feel comfortable in the body he was born in. As that was accomplished, the heels, "sexy clothes," makeup, and hair style were gradually shed and ultimately the choice was made to return to live as he was biologically born. In 2015 he legally changed all his paperwork to agree with his biological birth gender. We spoke of his remorse. Of his gender affirming medical providers and mental health counselors and their inability to support him emotionally through the process of detransitioning. Ultimately he decided to go back to university and become a mental health clinician in hopes that he could help people learn to feel comfortable in their own body--regardless of gender. He said he wishes he'd never had the surgery and will have to live with that choice for the rest of his life. Keep in mind he'd had the surgery in California way back in 2008ish... so he was already through that entire nearly two decades of believing he was born in the wrong body, surrounded by the earliest researchers in "gender afirmation." Having dealt with very different psychiatric diagnoses and worked though and escaping the profit-based medical system with my own permanent injuries, I had a lot of empathy for this dear man's journey. I think the world would be a much better place if we could be surrounded by people who accept us for who we are and walk with us in our mortal journey withholding judgement and personal opinions about life choices and lifestyles. Each human is having a very individualized mortal experience. That's why no one is an expert on what's right for them except the individual exercising the right to bodily autonomy and the reality that they deserve to live with their own choices, not choices thrust upon them by others who will never live with the consequences of those choices.

Calling my Canadian friends...

Good thread here. Could add that we probably underestimate post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, because it has been assumed that when you stop a drug the iatrogenic effects stop too - something we now know is false.

Enduring to the end is linked inextricably to the spiritual gift of charity. Enduring to the end is not merely a relentless determination to grit our teeth, hold on to the limits of our physical strength and mental capacity, and push through the challenges and adversities of mortal life; it is so much more than that. Enduring to the end is the joyous quest of a lifetime—a pressing forward with faith in Jesus Christ in a gradual process of trusting in and receiving help from our Savior to become more like Him. As our love for Him grows ever stronger and deeper, we can be blessed to receive spiritual perspective, the Lord’s empowering grace, and exceedingly great and indescribable joy.

What's that saying about flashy things? About 2 years after Dr. Moncrieff's paper obliterating the Serotonin theory, pharma introduces a new drug which keeps norepinephrine in the system... much like COMT gene variants. Why pharma sells this as an "antidepressant" is beyond me. Physiological speaking too much norepinephrine in the system triggers fight-or-flight responses which psychiatrists will label as mania... cardiovascular and kidney problems- yet-another cascade of iatrogenic worsening symptoms. @MAHA_Action

Finnish scientists trucked in real forest dirt and grass and laid it over the gravel at four daycare yards. They let the kids dig around in it for a month. The blood tests came back with changes the researchers hadn’t expected to see so fast or so clear. The study ran at ten daycares in two Finnish cities with 75 kids aged three to five. Four of the yards got the forest treatment: about a tennis court worth of soil and grass laid over the gravel, plus planters and peat blocks the kids could dig and climb on. Three others stuck with their normal gravel yards. The last three were daycares where the kids were already visiting real forests every day. After one month, the variety of bacteria living on the kids’ skin shot up, and the kind that helps train the skin’s immune defenses jumped the most. Their gut bacteria started to look like the gut bacteria of the forest-visiting kids. Their blood showed more of the immune cells whose job is to keep the body from freaking out at harmless stuff like pollen and peanuts, and overall inflammation dropped. The kids on the plain gravel yards showed none of this. Childhood asthma in the US doubled between 1980 and 1995. Food allergies in kids jumped 50 percent between 1997 and 2011, then jumped another 50 percent between 2007 and 2021. And peanut allergies in one-year-olds tripled between 2001 and 2017. The Finnish researchers think one of the reasons is simple: kids today don’t get dirty enough. 37 percent of American preschoolers now spend an hour or less outside on a normal weekday. Their immune systems are getting trained in environments stripped of the bacteria humans have always lived around. Aki Sinkkonen, who led the study, put it in plain words: “It would be best if children could play in puddles and everyone could dig organic soil.” The Finnish government is now helping pay for daycares across the country to make the same changes.